


Kobayashi Maru + Consequences

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Series: Wunderkind 0.5 [3]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Badass Riley Davis, Comfortember, Found Family, Gen, If the title didn't make that obvious, Pre-series Wunderkind, Star Trek References, if that's not a tag yet it should be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27605771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: "Agent Davis is missing."Of course Riley's the one who looks at her mandatory SERE training and says 'so long, suckers'. Matty wonders briefly if she should have expected this."She’s left the training grounds after assaulting two of our guards and breaking out of the compound. We can't track her. She disabled the GPS systems in the car she stole and she's avoiding traffic cameras so far."Matty would be impressed if she wasn't exhausted and well aware she's going to catch flak for this. After all, Davis is her recruit.Alternatively titled: The princess saves herself in this one
Relationships: Riley Davis & Matilda "Matty" Webber
Series: Wunderkind 0.5 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947766
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22





	Kobayashi Maru + Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> I'm aware this doesn't QUITE fill the Comfortember "Flashback" prompt of the day. But it IS a flashback to some pre-series events, so...I'm gonna be like Riley and say it's the spirit of the thing rather than the letter of the law that counts.

When Matty's phone rings at three a.m., she grabs it and answers, awake in ten seconds. There's no good reason for it to go off at this unearthly hour. She lists all the things it could be; sensitive intel leaks, a mole, an assassination plot, to drive down the hope that maybe, just maybe, there's been news about Ethan. Ethan is gone. The only way he's coming home is in a box. 

But the caller ID isn’t for any of the people on the S-Company op. It’s Agent Martin Dakins. Head of their specific cohort of SERE training for field agents. Where Riley has been for the past month. 

Matty’s heart flips. While it’s almost unheard of, there actually can be SERE related deaths. She prays that’s not the reason she’s getting this call. Even ‘Davis washed out’ would be better than that.

But it turns out it’s neither. 

"Agent Davis is missing."

Of course Riley's the one who looks at her mandatory SERE training and says 'so long, suckers'. Matty wonders briefly if she should have expected this.

"She’s left the training grounds after assaulting two of our guards and breaking out of the compound. We can't track her. She disabled the GPS systems in the car she stole and she's avoiding traffic cameras so far."

Matty would be impressed if she wasn't exhausted and well aware she's going to catch flak for this. After all, Davis is her recruit. 

“She also made a stop by our generators and whatever she’s done to them has taken them out of commission for at least a week according to our techs. We’ve had to send all our other trainees home, since we can’t complete the objectives.”

Matty shakes her head. Riley doesn’t leave her people in the lurch. She’d have known killing the systems would get the rest of her teammates released. She wonders how in the hell Riley pulled this off. They send hundreds of agents to this training. Matty’s never heard of this happening. But if anyone could beat the odds, it would be Riley. 

“She may have gone completely rogue. But if she’s simply defying regulations, we think she’ll reach out to you, since you’re her CO. If you hear from her, contact us immediately.”

“Thank you for the update, Dakins.” Matty hangs up without promising him anything. She has no idea what Riley is doing, and she won’t get the girl in more trouble without understanding why she did what she did. If Riley even decides to explain herself. 

Because if she doesn’t, then a cadet agent who’s been through ninety percent of the agency’s training just went dark. The only things left on Riley’s training agenda were passing this SERE course and a final comprehensive skills exam. 

She’s not surprised Dakins is getting as close to losing it as she thinks the man is capable of. A very nearly full fledged agent with too much knowledge and too few scruples is not someone anyone wants running around on the loose.

But Matty doesn’t think that’s the case. 

She’s sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee when the security system panel on the wall goes black. Her hand goes to her sidearm automatically, but she already knows who’s about to break into her apartment. 

_ There’s no way Riley would risk a break-in here if she planned to go rogue. She knows me too well to think she’d catch me unaware, no matter what she might have wanted to get her hands on. Whatever she did, she came to explain.  _

When she hears the creak of a window and the soft, almost noiseless thump of feet on the floor, she turns around. “I heard that.”

There’s a soft sigh.

“They told you, didn’t they.”

Riley emerges from the laundry room, her hair straggling around the shoulders of a too-large jacket, boots swinging from her hand. She looks tired, and her tangled hair has some leaves and twigs stuck in it, but she also looks dangerous. Matty can see the outline of a handgun concealed below her jacket. Where she got that, Matty is not interested in asking. 

Clearly, both of them know neither one is going to use their weapon. Matty rests her hands on the table and Riley sets her boots in a corner.

"I cannot decide who will be more pissed off. The site commander or the guy whose car you stole."

"Oh, they're the same person. At least, the first car was. It's at a Denny's somewhere on highway 90." Riley sits down on the couch, a trail of dirt and dead leaves following her path. She taps a dirty fingernail on the coffee table, it's the first time Matty's seen her without a coat of some ostentatious polish color. There’s some blood that’s run down the back of her hand and coated her index and middle finger, long dried. Matty doesn’t have to ask because she knows exactly what causes that wound. Reaching into the shattered glass window of a car to unlock the door. 

She fights back the headache building behind her eyes. "Why?"

"He was a world class jerk. Seriously, who let him be in charge of anything?" Riley asks. "Besides, what kind of dumbass tapes a key to the inside of their gas cap anymore?" Riley waves her hand in the air. “This came from car three. That owner was actually smart enough to keep his spare key on him.” 

_ Okay, valid point. _ Matty is absolutely going to have words with Agent Dakins about security protocols. But that does not negate the fact that Riley is about to fail her training. 

"Did you have to break out of there?"

"I was not about to sit through some guy with a power trip having a field day because the US Intelligence community gave him permission to be a bully." Riley doesn't sound petulant. She sounds righteously indignant. "It's the  _ Kobayashi Maru _ . You expected me  _ not  _ to change the game?"

"Did you just...quote  _ Star Trek _ to me?"

"Well, it fits. Create a no-win scenario designed to make the trainees feel helpless. Am I right?"

As much as she sort of hates to admit it, Matty has to agree. That's exactly what this training is about. And not only did Riley realize the point of the exercise, she decided she wasn't going to accept it.

"I don't believe in no-win scenarios." Riley squares her shoulders. "If I did, I might as well just go home now." She looks Matty in the eyes, her own gaze unwavering and challenging. “No one brings their A game to a fight they expect to lose. If you teach your agents to knuckle under and just deal, then you’re handicapping them.” 

Matty can see what Riley means. But she also can see the flaws in that mindset. She’s watched too many ops go bad. She’s been on some of those. She has the experience that Riley doesn’t. “Sometimes, Riley, there is no way out. You exploited some loophole you found. That might not happen again.” 

“Then I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. It certainly won’t be anything like this.” 

“You aren’t taking this training seriously.”

“Well, neither are your instructors,” Riley deadpan snaps back. “I knew they couldn’t actually hurt me. So it was absolutely useless. It didn’t reflect a real situation at all. I couldn’t be permanently injured or killed. So…” 

Matty tries very hard not to think about how much someone must have had to legitimately fear for their life in order to make that kind of threat assessment. Trainees can come out of these sessions having legitimately snapped and assumed the situation was real. 

Part of Matty had wondered if that had been what happened with Riley. She’d been less than enthusiastic about sending a child abuse survivor to such intense immersive training. But she’s not in charge of picking and choosing the criteria for field agent status. Before Riley left, Matty had tried to make sure she understood that this wasn’t Matty's first choice. 

_ “Both our hands are tied. I get it.” _ But apparently Riley didn’t mean that at all. 

Matty wonders if maybe it’s her fault this happened. If telling Riley that she wasn’t totally on board with this plan catalyzed her decision to break the rules and make her own. But she wouldn’t do it differently.  _ I wasn’t about to sacrifice Riley’s trust in me for the letter of the law on how we do things. _

“The only way you’re going to break me is permanent incapacitating injury, okay?” Riley says. “Threaten my eyes or my hands, we can start getting somewhere. But they weren’t gonna do it.” 

"Then why didn't you leave weeks ago?"

"They were teaching me useful skills in the survival part. I stayed as long as I was learning something."

"They were teaching you something useful in the rest."

"What? I didn't hear anyone say ‘here's how you take a punch without breaking your jaw’." She shrugs. "You wanna stop someone from getting gaslit by the enemy? Then teach them  _ how  _ to do that. I had a therapist in high school that would do better at that job than our CO." She meets Matty's eyes without a hint of anything but deliberate frustration. "Besides. One point of the exercise was to escape if at all possible."

Matty nods. She remembers that line.

"Then I'm not failing. And if this was real life? There's no point in  _ not  _ trying to escape. I either succeed or piss them off enough to shoot me. Either way, your intel stays safe."

Matty flinches. Riley’s mindset is win or die. That’s something Matty usually only sees in hardened field veterans. 

"Or you hold out long enough for rescue."

"All due respect, Matty? No one has ever come for me my whole life. And I am not about to start relying on backup from people who let high school bullies train high school graduates." 

There are times it's easy to forget Riley is eighteen. Matty swallows.

She's used to working within the confines of a broken system. Using it to accomplish the things she feels are right. She plays the rules and plays the games. It's just her strategy for survival. And for success.

But Riley isn't Matty. Riley didn't even really want to be here. 

Okay, Matty knows she did. But not for the reasons most people want to be here. Riley thinks she doesn't know about the secret encrypted flash drive the hacker disguises as one of her flashy necklaces. About her almost secret hacks into every major control network of the agency. Riley plans on bringing the CIA to its knees, single handedly. Or at least she did.

But Matty isn't afraid of her, not yet. Because Riley...Riley isn't like the rest of them. And Riley cannot make herself risk the lives of all their undercover operatives. Even for something she might believe is the 'greater good'.

She isn't like them. And that's something Matty won’t throw away lightly. 

"You think outside the box."

"Isn't that why you hired me?" Riley shrugs. 

“It is.”

“Then what’s the problem here?”

“The problem here is that I am not the final authority on whether your actions constitute a valid response. It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what the people who hold your future in their hands think.”

“So we convince them.”

“You  _ really _ don’t believe in the concept of no-win scenarios, do you?” Matty shakes her head. “Let me make some calls.”

She sends Riley to take a shower and change into some of the clothes she’s left at Matty’s apartment in a go-bag, and steps into the kitchen. 

When Dakins answers, he doesn’t bother with formalities.

“Do you have Davis in custody, Webber?”

“She’s not going anywhere, Dakins.” Matty weights that with all the meaning she can’t say out loud.  _ She’s not going back to you, not after this. And she’s not going to pay the price for you having a moment of incompetence. _

“I’m preparing a conduct report for her now,” Dakins says. “She’ll be lucky to walk away from a court martial for doing what she did. Davis has absolutely no respect for the agency or its people.”  _ I know she stole your car. Which is a detail you conveniently left out. Don’t pretend this is about her behavior as much as it is about you getting your ego hurt because an eighteen year old sleep-deprived cadet beat your game and basically gave you the finger to boot. _

"You expect someone who has the cultural knowledge of the Kobayashi Maru test, and a more than normal lack of respect for the rules, NOT to pull this off? Then you're dumber than I thought." Matty snaps. “I will deal with Davis’s disciplinary actions myself. Trust me, she’ll understand exactly the ramifications of what she did.” 

She’s glad Dakins accepts that statement on face value.  _ For an interrogation expert, he’s terrible at reading hidden meanings.  _ Then again, Dakins is more the brute force kind. 

It takes three more phone calls and a lot of bargaining, but when Riley steps into the kitchen with her hair in a towel and a bandaid on the back of her hand, Matty gives her a thumbs-up.

"If you agree never to tell anyone else that you beat the training, and how you did it, then the CIA is prepared to admit that you've passed." Matty tries to keep her stern face on, but she knows the smile is slipping through. "The specifics of your training experience will remain with the people in this room, or you will be required to start over." 

"I can do that."

“I promised Dakins I’d personally make sure you received the necessary punishment for your actions.”

Riley nods. “I understand. And I don’t mind if it’s you. Honestly. I’d have done the whole training with you. You’d have been better at it than him, that’s for sure.”

Matty nods. “I  _ am _ going to walk you through some scenarios you missed. But it will be with the intent of instructing you in the correct responses to them. Because you’re right. There’s no value in the sink or swim method for someone like you.” 

Riley looks shell-shocked now. In a way that no training could cause. No one can get anything out of that girl with brute force. And not with threats either. Matty still clearly remembers their interview. Riley was playing a game as much as she was. Taking advantage of an opportunity. Riley is fully prepared to defend herself against the world. What takes her by surprise is not needing to.  _ I doubt anyone’s ever showed much respect for her opinions or her observations.  _ But Matty is willing to admit when someone else has a valid point. 

_ And if I’m willing to do that, I hope she’ll reciprocate when she sees herself in the wrong. _ Matty’s found herself respecting Riley more like an equal and less like her trainee the more she’s learned about the girl. They’re fundamentally different people. But that’s exactly what Matty wants to leverage. 

She doesn’t have all the answers. No one does. But a lot of people with pieces of the answer...now that’s where the real breakthroughs happen. And beating everyone into the same mold isn’t going to foster the kind of environment Matty wants. 

“Now. About your punishment. I plan on subjecting you to my yet-to-be-perfected pumpkin pancake recipe. Does that sound like a sufficient response?”

Riley frowns and taps her chin. 

“I think that’s a little lenient. Throw in some undercooked bacon strips and I think that might cover it.”

“Undercooked bacon is cruel and unusual punishment,” Matty shakes her head. 

“I thought that was the point,” Riley says.

And this time, Matty laughs. 


End file.
